Note: As an experienced interviewee, Shel is also happy to answer your own questions.

You describe yourself as an ethical/green marketing expert. How does ethical/green marketing differ from ordinary marketing?

Your eighth book is “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green,” with a co-author who’s done more than 60 books. You have a foreword by Stephen M.R. Covey and more than 50 endorsements. What’s guerrilla marketing, and what’s green guerrilla marketing?

People tend to think of ‘green’ anything as expensive and complicated. Is that true for green marketing?

How and why should businesses seek alliances with their competitors?

But what if my competitors don’t act that way? They’ll try to take advantage!

One of your boldest arguments is ‘market share doesn’t matter’ How can you say this? Why shouldn’t businesses be focused on becoming major players in their market?

Can you give examples of well-known companies that thrive by being green?

It’s easy to be green and honest in good times. What about in a crisis or a recession?

Let’s say I’m a small businessperson who wants to try something green in my marketing efforts, but I don’t where to begin. Where should I start and how can I get my customers to notice and to care?

How can people get your book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green? And how can they get in touch with you?

Interview Questions: Consumer Focus

Note: As an experienced interviewee, Shel is also happy to answer your own questions.

Why is going green important?

What do Toyota and Ford understand about sustainability that Chrysler doesn’t?

Does green have to cost more?

What are some other easy and affordable steps to go green?

But I’m only one shopper–how can I really make a difference?

What’s the single most important thing consumers should focus on when choosing businesses to support?

How do these choices affect the kinds of communities we live in?

What advice can you give the business owners in our audience?

How can people get your book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green?

And how can they get in touch with you?

Interview Questions: Business for a Better World (Social Change) Focus

Note: As an experienced interviewee, Shel is also happy to answer your own questions.

You talk about solving the world’s most important problems: hunger, poverty, war, climate catastrophe, that sort of thing. People have been trying to solve these for thousands of years. What makes you think you will succeed when so many have failed before?

Wow! How did you get started with this?

Who are some of the entrepreneurs and companies you know who are really making a difference?

OK, now how about some companies we’ve actually heard of?

So—what steps can ordinary business people take to start addressing global issues? And how do they turn those initiatives into profit?

If a business is already involved in an effort to heal the world, do you have resources to help?

What if people feel overwhelmed or disempowered? Can they get help from you?

And you’ve got two gifts to help our listeners get started. Please tell us about them.

How does your eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, fit in—and how can people get a copy?

How can people get in touch with you?

Full Q&A (with answers to the above questions)

BUSINESS FOCUS

You describe yourself as an ethical/green marketing expert. How does ethical/green marketing differ from ordinary marketing?
The green market reacts very negatively toward hype, and toward anything they see as a breach of ethics. So what’s true of marketing in general is even more true of green marketing: You come at marketing from an attitude of service, of helping others. And of course you DON’T cheat or mislead or overhype or (fill in your own pet peeve).

Your eighth book is “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green,” with a co-author who’s done more than 60 books. You have a foreword by Stephen M.R. Covey and more than 50 endorsements. What’s guerrilla marketing, and what’s green guerrilla marketing?
Guerrilla marketing is a term coined by my co-author, Jay Conrad Levinson, back in 1984, when he published the first Guerrilla Marketing book. It’s the idea that you can be nimble and quick, just like a military guerrilla–sometimes that means you’re in and out quickly before your big, slow, lumbering competition has a chance to react.
Green guerrilla marketing sharpens the focus to look at the impact of a business on our environment, to shape that impact so it’s positive, and to tell your green story so effectively that the world begins to seek you out—and that will be different for deep green, lazy green, and nongreen audiences.
Incidentally, when you think this way, all sorts of “impossible” things become possible–and wonderful. As an example, I not only agented this book myself to a major publisher, I brought in Jay and his famous brand, I brought in Stephen M.R. Covey for the foreword, and even wrote my own back cover (something most authors never get to do when working with a major publisher).

People tend to think of ‘green’ anything as expensive and complicated. Is that true for green marketing?
While it sometimes happens that way, it certainly doesn’t have to be! In fact, the green ways are often cheaper and simpler–on both the marketing and operations sides. It’s a wonderful situation because if you understand this, doing the right thing becomes a no-brainer.
In Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, I highlight the remarkable work of Amory Lovins, who shows over and over again how the same amount of money and energy and time can be used to achieve, say, a 60 or 80 percent energy saving versus a 10 percent reduction. So why not do the big, bold move and channel that expenditure toward the much more dramatic savings, by thinking holistically. For instance, an associate of his was hired to lower the energy cost of an industrial facility in China. He yanked out the narrow, twisting pipes and replaced them with wide, straight ones. The reduced friction led to an astounding 92 percent reduction in energy consumption for that part of the process (and thus, carbon footprint and costs were reduced as well). Lovins’ think tank, Rocky Mountain Institute, was part of the team that did a “deep energy retrofit” on the Empire State Building of all things. It was not cheap, a $13 mllion project—but it’s saving more than $4 million every year. That’s an astonishing 33% ROI; you’ll never get that kind of return from a traditional investment. So now, America’s most famous skyscraper has become a model for how to green an old and very inefficient building.
In my own, much smaller, business as a marketing consultant and copywriter for green, socially conscious businesses, when I needed a new printer, I got one that prints on both sides of the page. My paper consumption went down 40 percent, and since I pay $45 or $50 for a case of recycled copy paper, that printer paid for itself out of paper savings in well under a year.

How and why should businesses seek alliances with their competitors? To create partnerships where both of you come out ahead–just as IBM and Apple teamed with Motorola to create the PowerPC chip in the 1990s, and FedEx’s partnership with the USPS allows the Postal Service to do Express Mail. Co-operative marketing allows everyone to reach a wider audience–there’s a great example on page 67, where 11 local florists banded together to do a killer display ad none of them could have done on their own.
For the launch of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, I estimate that I reached at least five million people (based on exact-match Google searches for the title that brought back over a million hits)–but my own lists only totaled less than 10,000. Partnerships made all the difference. Those same partnerships also allowed me to include over $2000 in extra bonuses for anyone who registers their purchase of the book; the partners benefit with zero-cost marketing, and I reach more people with a more attractive offer. Everybody wins.

But what if my competitors don’t act that way? They’ll try to take advantage!
It’s simple: don’t partner with jerks! If someone doesn’t have a win-win attitude, partner with someone else instead. Let the cutthroats cut their own throats by not participating.

One of your boldest arguments is ‘market share doesn’t matter.’ How can you say this? Why shouldn’t businesses be focused on becoming major players in their market?
For a service business, market share is completely irrelevant. If I were to handle even 0.0001 percent of the market for marketing consulting and book shepherding (my two primary categories), I’d never get any sleep, would have no free time, and would need a large staff. And because I have some very headstrong and unique ideas about the marketing process, I’d have a very difficult time finding people I could trust to do the work the way I’d want it done. While the situation is a bit different for a product business (revolving around issues like economies of scale), again, the key question is not what is my share of the market, but do I have enough sales to create a profitable business?
Interestingly, when companies worry less about market share and more about how to make the maximum positive impact on the world, market share tends to increase.

Can you give examples of well-known companies that thrive by being green? Socially conscious upstarts like Ben & Jerry’s and The Body Shop became so dominant in their categories precisely because of their social and environmental commitment. Marcal, makers of toilet paper and similar products, went recycled in 1950 but didn’t tell anyone—and actually went bankrupt. When the company started really focusing its packaging on telling the green story, it became the category leader.

It’s easy to be green and honest in good times. What about in a crisis or a recession?
Look for ways to be green that cost little or nothing to implement, and make sure you share your green commitment appropriately. Being green and basing your business in strong ethics will actually give you a strong marketing advantage in tough times: your customers will be more loyal, a bit less price-sensitive, perhaps, and much more willing to evangelize on your behalf.

Let’s say I’m a small businessperson who wants to try marketing green, but I don’t where to begin. Where should I start? How can I get my customers to notice and to care? Can you help?Start with the “low-hanging fruit”–the stuff that’s easy and cheap and has a quick payback. Buy your printing from companies using FSC-certified paper, waterless printing, and vegetable ink. Switch from disposable foam cups to reusable ceramic mugs in the break room. Replace bottled water with filtered tap. Switch to LED lighting. Buy a two-sided printer and train your staff to use that setting. Seek out local sources manufactured with green methods. Use Internet marketing instead of printed materials, when feasible. Etcetera, etcetera. Going green is a process; there’s always more to do, but start by taking easy steps.
On the marketing side–start mentioning all your green initiatives. Have a web page about your commitment to sustainability. Put it in your brochures and press releases, your product packaging, etc. Mention it in your sales calls. Remember to market differently to deep greens, lazy greens, and nongreens.
I can help with everything from developing new products and markets, helping you find partners who already reach your best audience, getting you media coverage and helping with social media outreach, presenting to or training your staff or marketing team both in sustainability and thrivabiliy practices—and in getting the full marketing and profitability benefits from them.

How can people get your book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green? And how can they get in touch with you?Visit GuerrillaMarketngGoesGreen dot com—Guerrilla is spelled G U E R R I L L A—and scroll down to order from the major online stores, or get an autographed copy directly from me. Any bookstore can also order it if you give them the full title: “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green”–there are more than 60 Guerilla Marketing books that cover other aspects of business and have nothing to do with what we’ve been talking about. Wherever you buy it, register your purchase at http://www.guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/resources-2/bonuses to get those $2000 worth of extra goodies we talked about earlier.
My email is s h e l AT Green And Profitable dotcom. Phone 413-586-2388(US Eastern Time). Twitter is my name, s h e l h o r o w i t z

CONSUMER FOCUS

Note: As an experienced interviewee, Shel is also happy to answer your own questions.

Why is going green important?First, nearly all scientists agree that the current situation threatens human existence. Second, cleaning up the planet reduces environmental illnesses and makes us healthier. And third, the natural world is a lot nicer than waste dumps, clear cut forests, and mine scarred mountains.

What do Toyota and Ford understand about sustainability that Chrysler doesn’t?That green consumers are a huge opportunity. We’ve reached a tipping point in society, and the green market is growing rapidly. Toyota and Ford actively court this market. I haven’t noticed Chrysler doing that, and they’re missing out.

Does green have to cost more?Nope! Often, it costs less. Two examples: A single LED light bulb that lasts for 15 years is cheaper than 15 incandescents that last a year each, even before you factor in the 80 percent reduction in the cost of electricity. And many utility companies will give them to you for free. A two-sided printer costs no more than a one-side model and saves you 40 percent in paper.

What are some other easy and affordable steps to go green?Start with the “low hanging fruit”–the stuff that’s easy and cheap and has a quick payback. Switch from disposable foam cups to reusable ceramic mugs. Replace bottled water with filtered tap. Buy local and organic, or better yet, start your own organic garden. And that’s just the beginning. Here’s a gift: I wrote an e book, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle. It sells for $9.95, but I’m going to give it to you. Just visit PainlessGreenBook.com slash earthday, and use the code, earthday.

But I’m only one shopper–how can I really make a difference?Pete Seeger sang, “If two and two and fifty make a million, we’ll see that day come round.” Our individual actions add up to something big—like a Buy Local movement, or soccer moms who organize for healthy snacks in school vending machines, or turning ugly vacant lots into beautiful green spaces.
And ordinary people can have a much bigger impact, too. It was a shipyard worker, Lech Walesa, who led Poland out from under a dictatorship. It was Lois Gibbs, a housewife, who took on the toxics at Love Canal. I personally organized the movement that saved a mountain. And even though I’m just one self employed marketing consultant working out of a farmhouse, I’m starting a much bigger movement now: to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance

What’s the single most important thing consumers should focus on when choosing businesses to support?Buy from businesses that promise benefits to you AND to society and the planet.

How do these choices affect the kinds of communities we live in?They create community spirit, good local jobs, public spaces that people want to enjoy—and most importantly, citizens who know we have the power to shape society. Let’s get rid of the idea that you have to accept things as they are just because they’ve always been that way. We can create transformational change, as long as we believe in our own power.

What advice can you give the business owners in our audience?Get into the green market NOW, before your competitors block you out. It’s growing very rapidly, but early movers still have an advantage. It doesn’t have to be difficult; contact me if you want help.

How can people get your book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green? Visit GuerrillaMarketngGoesGreen dot com—Guerrilla is spelled G U E R R I L L A—and scroll down to order from the major online stores, or get an autographed copy directly from me. Any bookstore can also order it if you give them the full title: “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green”–there are more than 60 Guerilla Marketing books that cover other aspects of business and have nothing to do with what we’ve been talking about. Wherever you buy it, register your purchase at http://www.guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/resources 2/bonuses to get those $2000 worth of extra goodies we talked about earlier.

And how can they get in touch with you?My email is s h e l AT Green And Profitable dotcom. Phone 413-586-2388(US Eastern Time). Twitter is my name, s h e l h o r o w i t z

BUSINESS FOR A BETTER WORLD (SOCIAL CHANGE) FOCUS

Note: As an experienced interviewee, Shel is also happy to answer your own questions.

You talk about solving the world’s most important problems: hunger, poverty, war, climate catastrophe, that sort of thing. People have been trying to solve these for thousands of years. What makes you think you will succeed when so many have failed before?First, we finally know how to solve hunger, poverty, and climate change. For the first time in history, we have technology AND resources that can really make a difference in hunger and poverty and at the same time actually reverse the negative human impact on the environment.
Turning war into peace feels harder—until you remember that many wars are based in conflicts over resources. So when you replace finite resources with infinite ones while taking a population out of poverty, a lot of the motivation for war goes away. Even many of the wars we think of as ethnic or religious conflicts—often that’s grafted onto a framework where at least one of those populations feels the other is cutting them off from what they need. Solving those still needs a lot of human to human dialogue and peacemaking, but it’s a lot more doable if you’re not fighting over energy or water or bauxite or whatever.

Wow! How did you get started with this?I’ve always had a passion to make the world better. I’ve been an activist since I was 12, but I hadn’t really brought it into my work life. Then, in 1999, a developer decided to wreck our local mountain with a big housing development. The so called experts were wringing their hands and moaning, “this is terrible but there’s nothing we can do.” For me, that was the red flag in front of the bull. I wasn’t going to accept it. So my wife and I organized Save the Mountain. We thought it would take five years to beat the project, but the group got thousands of people involved, and we won in 13 months flat.
After we won, I realized that this campaign used not only everything we knew about community organizing, but also everything we knew about marketing. So I started to look for ways to braid the marketing and activist sides together in my career. I became a very public advocate of green and ethical business practices, wrote two books on this including my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, and started giving my “Making Green Sexy” talk throughout the US and abroad.
Then, in December, 2013, with help from a very gifted business coach, I decided to go bigger. Why settle just for green business profitability? Could I really heal the world on a deep level, and make a living at it? Could I live with myself if I didn’t try? So I started 2014 with the strongest sense of purpose I’ve ever had; this could be my legacy. At age 57, I finally know what I want to be when I grow up. It’s so exciting!

Who are some of the entrepreneurs and companies you know who are really making a difference?

Dean Cycon, CEO of Dean’s Beans. Not only has he been 100% organic and fair trade since the day he opened, but he turns 50% of profits back into village-initiated and village-run community development projects.

d Light, creating a ladder out of poverty by replacing toxic and fire prone kerosene lamps with solar LED lanterns that never need fuel.

Ben & Jerry’s and The Body Shop were founded in social and environmental commitment—and I say that’s why they were so successful against the odds.

Dove’s amazing campaign around girls’ self image and empowerment.

Patagonia, brave enough to ask people if they really need to buy another product.

If a business is already involved in an effort to heal the world, do you have resources to help?You can nominate your favorite social change project on the Business For a Better World website, Business dash For dash A dash Better dash World dotcom [http://business-for-a-better-world.com], and then other people can get involved with it. I’m hoping eventually that site will be a world-wide community supporting each other in everyone’s good work.
And I also have lots of ways to help you get the word out about how your company is making the world better.

What steps can ordinary business people take to start addressing global issues? And how do they turn those initiatives into profit?Do the easy things first. There are so many actions we can all take that cost little or nothing, are easy to implement, and make a significant difference. A few examples:

Use 100th of the water most people use to brush your teeth or wash a dish or water a lawn.

Switch to two sided printing—and encourage people to zoom the view on their monitors so they need to print less. (I keep mine at 150% in Word.)

Solicit program and product ideas from employees.

Organize a weekly farmers and artisans market at your workplace, and invite indigenous people to come and sell their wares.

Match your employees’ charity donations and provide ways for them to donate time during work hours.

Then go deeper! Look systematically at every aspect of your business. Where are the opportunities to serve and also make a profit? What processes could be streamlined to use resources more efficiently? How can the waste you produce become raw material for something else?

What if people feel overwhelmed or disempowered? Can they get help from you?

Of course! I can help with everything from developing new products and markets, helping you find partners who already reach your best audience, getting you media coverage and helping with social media outreach, presenting to or training your staff or marketing team both in sustainability and thrivabiliy practices—and in getting the full marketing and profitability benefits from them. Remember—you don’t have to do it alone.

And you’ve got two gifts to help our listeners get started. Please tell us about them.

On the Business For a Better World home page, you’ll find a link to my TEDx talk, “Impossible is a Dare: Business For a Better World.” That link has both the video and the slides.

Also, I normally sell my e book, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle, for $9.95. But today’s listeners can get a copy as a gift. Just visit Painless Green Book dotcom, forward slash earthday(all one word), and use the code, earthday

How does your eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, fit in—and how can people get a copy?

While most of the book is specifically about marketing green products and services, there are several chapters that outline a vision of the world we really want, and profile a few of the “practical visionaries” who are helping us get there. I guarantee you’ll find their stories inspiring.

Visit Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green dot com—Guerrilla is spelled G U E R R I L L A—and scroll down to order from the major online stores, or get an autographed copy directly from me. Any bookstore can also order it if you give them the full title: “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green”–there are more than 60 Guerrilla Marketing books that cover other aspects of business and have nothing to do with what we’ve been talking about. Wherever you buy it, register your purchase on my site to get $2000 worth of extra goodies.

Beginning with a one-toddler action against smokers at his parents’ party at about age three, Shel Horowitz has been involved in environmental and social change movements his whole life. In 1972, at age 15, he was involved in a community group that opposed a nuclear power plant proposed for two miles north of New York City (a proposal that the utility company quickly withdrew). A veteran of the 1977 Seabrook occupation, his first book, written when he was only 22, was about why nuclear power makes no sense. Shel is also the author of the e-book, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life-With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle. He is directly responsible for the first nonsmokers’ rights regulations in Northampton, Massachusetts, and for the defeat of a large and inappropriate mountaintop development in his current home town of Hadley, Mass. His Down to Business webzine was one of the first business publications to have a regular section on sustainability.

On the marketing side, Shel was still a teenager when he started doing publicity and marketing for grass-roots community organizations with zero promotional budget. There wasn’t even money available for stamps, so he used to hand-deliver press releases on a three-speed bicycle, Trained as a journalist, he first became aware of the power of the news media when a local paper refused to print meeting notices he wrote for a controversial group—but gave extensive news coverage to its refusal. Now, for over twenty years, he’s helped businesses, nonprofits, and community groups get their message out to the public with little or no expenditure.

After finishing Antioch College at age 19, Shel had to come to terms with his own work history: career paths not only in writing and marketing/PR, but also in radio, teaching, arts, food service, office systems, community organizing, and environmental issues. Putting together his own first résumés led to a new career direction: résumé writing and career services. Shel quickly realized he had the ability to discover a job candidate’s best strengths and present them so those are highlighted while weaknesses are downplayed. In short, he turned résumé writing into a marketing function.

A native of New York City, he returned there to work at two literary agencies as a manuscript reader, and then worked for a year and a half as a VISTA Volunteer community organizer with the Gray Panthers. Pursuing poetry on the side, he became very active in the New York open poetry scene, and met Dina Friedman at an open reading in Greenwich Village.

The two left New York in 1980, spending a year in Philadelphia before settling in Western Massachusetts in 1981—and founding Accurate Writing & More with an initial marketing cost of $12 and a total start-up under $200 (most of it for a 13-year-old IBM Selectric typewriter). They married two years later. Daughter Alana was born in 1987—the same year Dina joined the business—and son Rafael followed in 1992.

Drawing on the marketing he’d practiced in and after college, Shel began marketing his own business locally, and grew it to the largest of its kind in a three-county service area. In 1985, he published the first of six books on low-cost, high-impact marketing. Gradually, he expanded his practice to marketing for other businesses and nonprofits. He began using e-mail as a marketing tool in 1994, set up his first website in 1996, and quickly developed a reputation internationally as a skilled copywriter and marketing strategist who knows how to stretch a marketing dollar. His client list now includes accounts in Europe, Asia, and all across the U.S.; his books have sold to dozens of countries, and have been republished in South Korea, India, Mexico, Italy, and Turkey.

And as an environmental and social justice activist since 1972, he has used these skills pro bono for a number of environmental and social change organizations—especially a group he founded called Save the Mountain, which mobilized thousands of people (in a rural county) and rapidly beat back an “unstoppable” poorly-planned development on a mountain abutting a state park; this was a campaign that combined everything Shel knew about marketing and community organizing, and drew on the skills of many others that he recruited into the organization. Following the success of this campaign, Shel looked at a bigger canvas, and founded the Business Ethics Pledge to make future Enron and Madoff scandals unthinkable. So far, he has signers in more than 30 countries.

Shel now offers not only copywriting and strategic marketing planning based in Green principles, but also helps unpublished writers become published authors. Five of his eight books have won awards and/or been republished in other countries, including his most recent, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (John Wiley & Sons, 2010, co-authored with Mr. Guerrilla Marketing himself, Jay Conrad Levinson).

This new book states that honesty, integrity, and a commitment to environmental sustainability are important—but market share is often the wrong metric entirely…that long-term relationships are better than a one-time sale…and that competitors can be among your best allies.

The book provides dozens of examples of companies large and small that have succeeded by putting people first: familiar names like Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Southwest Airlines as well as numerous entrepreneurs who are successful in their own niches, even if not widely known.

Shel is a popular speaker and media interviewee (including multiple appearances in the New York Times, Inc, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, and many others) who loves to get the word out about this important new paradigm. A few among many venues where Shel has spoken:

Forum Davos, Davos, Switzerland (February 2010)

American Society of Journalists and Authors (April 2010)

Book Expo America (multiple appearances)

Noteworthy USA National Convention Keynote

Public Relations Society of America International Conference

Infinity Publishing Author Conference Keynote

Publishers Marketing Association University (multiple appearances)

Ragan Strategic Media Conference

Regional writing and publishing associations in the Bay Area, Saint Louis, New York, and elsewhere (three with several repeat appearances)

University of Massachusetts Family Business Center (multiple appearances)

Business for Social Responsibility

Colleges and universities including Smith College, University of Vermont, Mount Holyoke College, others

Contact him with this link, or call 413-586-2388 (8 a.m. to 10 p.m., US Eastern Time).